Punish France?

France is whining about the effects of the grass-roots boycott that Americans have undertaken against them. Apparently, it is doing much more economic damage than they thought it would. And now, there are calls from parts of the Administration to punish France for its stubbornness leading up the war.

I have no problem with the boycott of French products. I do think that we need to be careful about openly punishing the French on a governmental level though.

With the boycott, since it is not government sanctioned, the French government can't impose reciprocal trade sanctions against us. But if we officially sanction them, we do open ourselves to retaliatory actions.

So how do we get around retaliation while still punishing the French for being the French? I think it is actually pretty simple. We only need to invalidate one single one-sided contract - TotalElfFina's.

It is generally accepted everywhere, except Paris maybe, that the contract between Saddam and TEF was really one-sided in its benefit to TEF. We just simply need to declare the contract void for not having provided adequate consideration to the Iraqi people - the true owners of the liquid gold TEF wants to pump. Of all the contracts Saddam had made, this is the most blatantly one sided out there. Politically there is no risk in invalidating it.

The risk is in what we do after that. The oil fields still need to be developed. We can't very well turn around and award the contract to ChevronTexaco or ExxonMobil or even British Petroleum. To do so would open us up to accusations of stealing the best deals. Truth wouldn't matter - the appearance would be damning enough to kill a large chunk of the goodwill we built up in fighting the war the right way.

So what to do? Well, we can't give the contract to a coalition company and we want to keep it from the weasels. There is one company that comes to mind that would be a good choice. Give the contract to Shell/Royal Dutch Petroleum.

This would allow us to reward friends who put themselves at great political risk early on in the diplomatic fight. Remember, the Dutch were the first to completely circumvent NATO to provide Turkey with Patriot missile batteries to help with the defense of that nation. That was a risky move for the Dutch government.

And rewarding them with one of their companies getting the oil field development contract isn't out of line with what they did for us.

It would be a pretty slick deal. The French would lose their most precious contract in Iraq. One of our stalwart friends would get it and we wouldn’t suffer the wrath of negative public opinion. Most people don't care about changing one European firm for another. The only downside risk comes if France decides to accelerate the annexation of Holland as part of the EUnificiation plan.

Punish France? Absolutely. We just need to make sure we do it right. For all of Chirac's "sophistication" he is proving to be a pretty naive opponent.